Transcript:
Kris Rivenburgh: This is Kris Rivenburgh of Accessible.org, and you’re listening to the Beer Mighty Things podcast.
Kyle Rheiner: Welcome to the Beer Mighty Things podcast. What you listen to while you brew, that’s what’s in your ears as you drink beers. I’m your host, Kyle Rheiner, and today we’re talking with Kris Rivenburgh. He’s an attorney. He’s an ADA website compliance and web accessibility consultant. He’s the author of the ADA book and founder of Accessible.org. Kris, how are you, sir?
Kris Rivenburgh: I’m well. I was just working on accessibility workflows right before we started recording.
Kyle Rheiner: Well, then you’re ready to go, man. You’re warmed up?
Kris Rivenburgh: Absolutely.
Kyle Rheiner: Nice. Awesome. You’re coming to us from Texas.
Kris Rivenburgh: I’m currently in Colorado, so I just moved from Texas to Colorado. So I’m in the southwest part of Colorado right now.
Kyle Rheiner: Where in the southwest part?
Kris Rivenburgh: Think of Telluride, Montrose, Grand Junction. Right now, I’m staying at the rentals – I’m doing long-term rentals month by month, so I’m skipping around.
Kyle Rheiner: That’s cool. That’s a great way to see. It’s such a big state. You go from like 6 hours to each corner or something like that, right?
Kris Rivenburgh: It is. I love it. I love the mountains.
Kyle Rheiner: I love it too.Yeah, we just spent a summer out in Colorado Springs, Pike Peak, Garden of the Gods Gardens. What a beautiful place.
Kris Rivenburgh: Very cool.
Kyle Rheiner: Such a nice area. We ended up bumping into a bunch of people from Philadelphia while at the Rockies game. It wasn’t even a Phillies-Rockies game, so it was just weird that we ended up sitting next to all these people from back home. It was strange, but yeah, everybody likes Colorado, I guess.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah. And there are a lot of breweries in the state, too, right?
Kyle Rheiner: There are a few.
Kris Rivenburgh: Absolutely. There’s like a million. It’s awesome. I’ve been to a few of them, actually. There were a few in Fort Collins that I visited.
Kyle Rheiner: Oh, yeah, for sure. There’s a New Belgium out there, I think. So you’re an attorney first, right?
Kris Rivenburgh: I’m an attorney. I’m not practicing, but I’m more leveraging my background to help people with this. This circumstance that we find ourselves in.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah. You wrote the book, “The Bar Exam is Easy.”
Kris Rivenburgh: I did write that book, yes. A long time ago. It’s funny because that same scenario is playing out the same way. I’m trying to help people circumvent this industry where we have really like a faux value add that’s not really there. And with the bar exam, what I realized is that, hey, they’re telling people to study this the wrong way. You don’t need all these other things. They sound good, but they aren’t actually helping you pass the bar exam. So I wrote that book, and it’s actually sold quite well, and it’s referenced by a lot of different people. It’s just like a different way to think about it. You know, if you need these, I don’t like these flashcards and turn grading, all of that type of stuff, then you should go for it. But what I found out was that you really just need to go through the practice questions again and again.
Kyle Rheiner: People make it hard. They think too much about it, overthinking or it’s anxiety, and children, you’re nervous.
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, the problem is that the industry got surrounded, right? Because this is a multi-million dollar industry, year after year, twice a year, and you have these bar exam courses, and then the bar exam courses have gotten better over time. But when I was in law school, it was basically $3,000. You take this course and they’re going to tell you how to pass. Well, I mean, they’ll get there, but they do so in one of the most inefficient and ineffective ways possible. Look at the bar exam passage rates. And they weren’t that impressive. I mean, it was like, it was very pedestrian. And, as I, you know, I was skeptical to begin with. I went ahead and took a bar review course and I didn’t pass. And I was like, well, this is, you know, this isn’t the right way. So as I, the time I passed was the last time I took the bar exam. And I studied on my own. Like, I just studied my own. I passed. And I was like, this is all you need. You don’t need. You don’t need all these other things because they’re like, as I said, they’re like, value adds in appearance, but not in reality.
Kyle Rheiner: Interesting. So if I get these flashcards of studying over the weekend, take the testimony, I’m good to go.
Kris Rivenburgh: I think the line is about 2000 questions. If you get through 2000 questions and you go through subjects, that’s a really good baseline. But of course, you know, I’m not saying that flashcards can’t work for some people, but I think for the majority, it’s really about going through the questions, because that’s how you’re going to learn the law versus going through hotlines, learning the law, and then trying to learn how to take the practice questions, which are not straightforward by any means.
Kyle Rheiner: So, yeah, I mean, all the insurance exams we take, you know, they’re written by attorneys. Right. And, you know, there’s always, like, you know, two right answers, but one’s just more right. It’s mainly answered.
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, I’ve never understood why they tried to trick you. Like, is it the point just to know the information rather than.
Kyle Rheiner: I mean, I think it’s more right of passage than it is, like, you know, a practical, objective standard for knowing, you know, having known this information?
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah. Well, I, pulled something out of what you just said. You know, one of the first things you said was you like to help people, so, you know, appreciate that and, think of doing those things with, you know, with what you’re doing here and the information you’re putting out. So let’s kind of dive into it. Right, the ADA. Right. We’re seeing that term a lot. It’s the Americans with Disabilities act. Why are you passionate about that? Do you know somebody who is affected by this, or did you see a need, or how do you get behind this?
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, I came across it. It was just an article. This was a long time ago. This was about seven years ago. I came across an article that was about someone being sued over website accessibility, just as an interest. I looked into it and I, read it, and then I just forgot about it. I went away from it. And then, it was several months later that I came across another article and the same basic fact pattern. And I was like, okay, there’s a problem here. And so I started just looking into it. I didn’t know I was going to be in this space, and I started looking into it, and as I read, I didn’t fully understand what I was reading, but I knew what I was reading was wrong, and I knew wrong in my way.
Kyle Rheiner: Who’s wrong? Or what was wrong with it?
Kris Rivenburgh: It’s wrong in the sense that it wasn’t clear what to do. And I could tell the people that were writing it were just really rehashing what other people have written, and I just knew it wasn’t. I knew this wasn’t helping people resolve this actual problem. And so what I ended up doing was I started writing on it. Even though I didn’t fully understand what I was writing on, I knew I understood it better than what the people that are currently writing, putting out content. I knew I understood it better than them. So I ended up writing an article that, ranked number one in Google for ADA website. Compliance. And a lot of people found out about me that way, and they appreciated the article because the article made it much more clear what the situation was and what you needed to work on.
Kyle Rheiner: Was that on edm.com?
Kris Rivenburgh: It was, yeah, it was. And it was my plain English website compliance and plain English article. And then from there, I just kept writing and, just working in the space, understanding it better myself, researching, looking through the complaints filed in court. And then I started to get a really good feel for what was going on, and then also learning about accessibility myself. I did not know about website accessibility. I had to study the technical standards, and what I did was, as I was writing guides for the standards, I started to understand them more and more myself. Obviously, I had a good baseline understanding, but just going through the standards and then rewriting them for people in plain English, because these are very technical standards, I started to understand accessibility better.
Kyle Rheiner: And so it’s been said, right, if you want to learn something, teach it, right. The more you teach it, you become an expert. Right. But if you can explain it,
then you understand it. Right. If you have a product that you can’t explain, well, you don’t understand it. Right?
Kris Rivenburgh: So, yeah, I mean, obviously that’s why. That’s kind of why the podcast kind of happened, right? And me becoming, you know, now I do lots of speaking engagements and things like that. You know, I can explain things. I’m way more comfortable. The more you do it, the better you get, so.
Kyle Rheiner: The hell absolutely. It’s all about experience, and I just don’t think a lot of people. We have people from both sides. You have people from the technical side of accessibility, you have people from the legal landscape side that were involved in, with all this litigation. But I think that there were very few people that had, you know, that they were bringing, a point of view for both sides. And as I started to level up in understanding the technical standards, I could better relate what was happening back and forth.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah, sure. So, you know, and what. How I found you, you know, I’m trying to help out my insurance clients, right. And any of those with online stores, what I see is, you know, those with online stores, they get these lawsuits brought against them because, say, people who are visually impaired can’t place an order or there’s some other situation, which I’m sure we’ll dive into. All right, so, hey, I can’t order on your website. It’s not completely, I want to order your stuff. So now, you know, what we’ve seen is like, thousands of lawsuits from the same attorney and same plaintiff. Right. We’re seeing these, and they’re paying out. So, you know, are they frivolous? Maybe. Probably. You know. But we gotta protect and educate, so. Yeah, I’m glad we’re talking. I’m glad that, you know, I put something on a calendar. You called me, I was like, Elliot, I think that’s. Let’s get this done. Right? That’s how things happen, so. All right. You know, the only thing better than winning a lawsuit is avoiding one, right? So let’s talk about that. What are we seeing? How can we mitigate it? Let’s dive into the advice you give. You have some really great, videos online. So let’s talk about how this happened, what we can do, and, I guess where we start with the law and DOJ. Where do we start?
Kris Rivenburgh: When you said it exactly right, my contention is I don’t want to be technically right. I want to be practically right. And what that means is we don’t have to deal with a lawsuit or a demand letter. Those never come our way. And so I think that is the exact right approach, because what happens a lot, in my experience, is people start asking, well, what about this exception? Or what if, you know, what if the law doesn’t apply to me? And I’m like, well, it might not. You might be right. But you’re going to have to. You’re going to have to litigate that, because as it stands, there’s an asymmetry, right? The plaintiff’s lawyers have no problem being involved in litigation. This is what they do. This is built into their system. So, they have the framework for this. You, on the other hand, get a lawsuit, and it’s going to upend your day. Right? You guys deal with this, it’s going to detract from your business. You’ve got to contact the defense attorney, because the defense attorney needs to be experienced in the space. There are so many considerations. So, as you said, let’s avoid this altogether. Now, you brought about the law. And what’s very interesting is just a few days ago, literally this week, we had Title Two regulation come forward. And while that doesn’t apply to private entities, it applies to state and local governments. It does give us a really good idea of what is coming for Title Three, which will apply to private entities. That was very interesting, what they would come forward, but basically the Department of Justice has taken the unofficial stance that the ADA does apply to websites, but they never said exactly what was necessary to be compliant. And they said that private entities have flexibility, in how they comply, so long as they do comply. And the best practice has been these technical standards, the web content accessible guidelines, version 2.1 AA. So I always recommended that clients strive for conformance with those standards. But there’s a way in which you can work towards conformance, which will reduce your risk of, litigation, which is, let’s take, take care of these accessibility issues that plaintiffs lawyers seem to key in on, and let’s work on those first.
Kyle Rheiner: And it’s wild, too. It’s like, all right, I’m running a business. I need an online store. I’m getting Shopify. I’m gonna have someone build me a website. I don’t know that there’s even a compliance situation. I don’t know what. I don’t know. And you would think that whoever’s building your website will just make it compliant, but that doesn’t always happen.
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, and they don’t even know. So this is something that a lot of web developers, web designers, and a lot of the platforms still to this day, are still working through this sort of, hey, we can win a ton of money if we just target all these websites that aren’t complying. We just do. I mean, and that’s what they’ve done. They really just. There are so many famous players in this space that are just running with this, and they are, you know, it’s a system, it’s an industry.
Kyle Rheiner: And we looked into one. You know, we saw the name of the plaintiff and then the attorney, and then I guess a lot of stuff was public knowledge. There were 750 of these lawsuits filing at 750 websites in the same week.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah.
Kyle Rheiner: Just from the same person and attorney. It’s insane.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah. I mean, to some extent, it’s just like printing money. It’s just like, they do this over and over again. So there’s really nothing holding them back other than, like, you know, ethics or does that, like, prove, like, yes, I really wanted to buy XYZ on your website. I really want it. I was gonna buy from all these people. Don’t they have to prove that they have the ability to actually pay for all that? Or, like, how does that, how does that work?
Kyle Rheiner: So that gets into standing. But the problem is that, the problem is that most of these cases do not actually, do not actually go through the litigation process in court. It’s more just, hey, we’re making this claim. You can defend it, but, you know, if you start to defend these cases, it starts to rack up, you know, you start to back up, defense attorneys fees really, really fast. And so for a lot of, a lot of defendants, a lot of people who are against these cases, they’re just like, it’s going to be more efficient. I’m also going to reduce my risk if I just settle ahead of time versus start to make these counter arguments.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah. So, you know, we dug into some of those stats. It was like, do you want to go fight it in court? It’s probably going to cost 100 grand. Or if we just settle, it’s 2030, insurance company pays, it moves on. Or you don’t have the insurance coverage because this is really like third party discrimination coverage, which falls under the implemented practices policy, which most people don’t buy even though they should, you know, so it’s, it’s just taking advantage of people, really. What’s, what’s going on.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, yeah. It’s a definitely, like, a layered situation. And what happened with. What is especially problematic is this also detracts from any genuine complaints that are filed, because we have these serial litigants, but then we also have people that are genuinely trying to get access and it can. So it lumps everyone together and then also there develop this negative stigma. And what’s especially disappointing about the whole situation is this was originally supposed to be about accessibility. People with disabilities gaining access. And it’s been completely sidetracked by plaintiffs lawyers involving themselves, and we’re having a serial litigation. Small business owners are, of course, being decimated by this. And even large companies, they feel the pain of this as well. And then we have, you know, you look into the accessibility marketplace and we have all of these different, all of these different sellers, different companies that, as I mentioned earlier, they’re distracting from what actually needs to happen. And because a lot of companies want to, they want to be SaaS companies. So that increases their margins, it increases subscriptions, and it increases their valuation. That’s where they want to be at. So that’s what they’re trying to sell. What we really need are professional services here, and nobody wants to be a professional service.
Kyle Rheiner: So how can business owners know, you know, like, again, they don’t know how I’m gonna, I assume I’m going to an expert, gonna build an online store. What questions should they be asking?
Kris Rivenburgh: What questions you should be asking? Well, I would look at, is this going to provide full WCAG conformance? Because that’s really where we want to be at. And if you’re going to source to a third-party provider, you want to make sure that that’s where you’re going to. That’s what’s going to be the result of you
paying out this money because it is expensive. But what is another problem is people pay money, but they don’t end up resolving the issues. What happens a lot of times is people get audits. Audits are great. You need an audit to know of all the accessibility issues that exist on your website. However, audits do not actually fix the issues. They just tell you what is there. And a lot of website owners, they start with the audit and then things just kind of drift off and they never end up fixing all the issues where they don’t even take action on the audit. So you need to be aware that there’s an audit side of this, which is definitely, I’m not disowning on it, but there’s a second part you have to, which is remediation. And you need to remediate not only your code but your content. So you really want to pay attention to detail. And if any seller is telling you, hey, this is so easy, or this is just a breeze, or like, don’t worry about it. No, you know, when you’re going over, you know, the scope of work, there should be very much a detailed and regimented approach on the part of the seller. And if there’s not, then that would, that, leads to questions, right? And it’s like, okay, what are you telling us? Are you going to help us with remediation? Because understandably some website owners don’t want. You don’t want someone to be editing their code directly. But then there’s also the staging aspect of it. It’s like, okay, well, let’s take a staging website. But you know, really the question is, how are we going to get to full WCAG conformance? And what are the services that you are providing? Are they manual or is this automated? Is this software? Are you selling me something? That sounds nice, but in theory, but in practice, doesn’t actually get me to where I want to be.
Kyle Rheiner: Kris, so I only know what WCAG is because I’ve been perusing your websites. Can you explain the WCAG and what that is, what it means?
Kris Rivenburgh: Sure. These are the WCAG is not going to the web content accessibility guidelines, and these are technical standards for accessibility. And, best practice is WCAG 2.1 AA conformance. And this is comprised of 50 what are called success criteria. Think of success criteria as requirements for things to do for accessibility. So just think there are like 50 items that we need to run through to make sure our website is conformant with these different success criteria. And so when we look at the web content accessible guidelines, just think of this as, this is the reference for what I need to do to make my website successful.
Kyle Rheiner: Is this limited to those with online stores only, or could you somehow be non-compliant even if you aren’t selling something?
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah, I mean, that’s a question where there’s, when we look to the American Disabilities Act, they tell us what, they give us twelve categories of examples of places of public accommodation. If you fall under one of those categories, you really need to be compliant, especially because we know regulation is coming. But practically, we know that plaintiffs lawyers are willing to test, they’re willing to try things out and see how it goes. So, you know, in some ways, the law is still unclear, in the sense that, you know, we know what’s going to come. When I say the law is unclear, there’s still no actual technical law that applies. We have a specific requirement under the ADA or anything else that applies to private entities. There’s still nothing technically that exists in the United States. However, we know the legal landscape and we know that regulation is forthcoming. So, and I forget the original question here, but yeah, there’s nothing, there’s nothing specific.
Kyle Rheiner: And what was the, what was your question?
Kris Rivenburgh: My question was, you know, does this only affect those who are selling things online?
Kyle Rheiner: So, no, no, it doesn’t only affect people who are selling, but primarily. So think of if you have a physical location. Think of if you have an e-commerce store. Those are, those are primarily the types of website owners that we see being sued. But it’s not to say that it can’t be limited to those.
Kyle Rheiner: It’s scary. You think, hey, we’re operating our business and the website. So, hey, we’re operating our back of house, we’re making beer, we’re selling it over the bar in our tap room, and we have a couple of shirts and glassware online. That’s like a very small part of our business. It’s something we don’t really think about. We just throw stuff up online. We don’t have a ton of sales. And then you get blindsided by this. Wait, what the hell? This isn’t even, this is not our focus. And now we’re now getting sued. You know, and it’s just another headache. It’s another thing to think about. It’s another thing that they were unaware of. Right. So, you know, it’s like you gotta watch your back in your front. It’s tough, man.
Kris Rivenburgh: Definitely, because website, we’re seeing increasingly there are more and more requirements, right? It’s not just accessibility, it’s privacy policies. And there’s so much to having a website and now it’s just, you know, the cost of having a website operating a business online is not up.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, for sure. So what?
Kyle Rheiner: Sorry, I have an online store. How do I know? Or just a website, how do I know if it’s compliant or not?
Kris Rivenburgh: You really need to. This would be something we really want to have an audit perform. But if you go and find accessibility issues, the more you can run a scan right now for free, and the scan will give you a general sense and feel of your overall accessibility. The more issues you have, the more likely it is that you’re exposed to risk. But this is not to say that scans are conclusive because there are many more accessibility issues that you need to account for. So that’s the way that if I’m someone, I’m just like, okay, is my website accessible? I’m going to get a general overall feel by going to a scan. And I like the wave scan by web aim. I recommend that to be friendly. It’s intuitive.
Kyle Rheiner: What’s that? What’s that w e b?
Kris Rivenburgh: It is wave.webaim.org. wave.webaim.org. Yeah. So that’s a really good start. But you want to get an audit to know what accessibility issues exist. But if you haven’t taken into account accessibility, there are likely accessibility issues that exist on your website. But your question is a layered one because when you ask is my website compliant? Just having accessibility issues technically does not mean your website is not ADA compliant. The standard under the ADA is actually meaningful access. But what is happening in litigation is plaintiffs lawyers are strictly holding the web content accessibility guidelines against website owners. So what they’re going to do is they’re going to take accessibility issues that reside on the website. They’re going to paint a picture. The more issues you have, the stronger the picture is. Depending on the issues, some issues can be an outright barrier to access, but others can be more of like, okay, well, let’s just say my color contrast falls below a certain threshold. Likely no one was, barred from access. Right. There was no barrier to access in that sense. So it really is, it is a fluid situation. But when we talk about compliance, typically we’re talking about the practical implications. Am I going to be sued because of compliance? And these two are really two different things.
Kyle Rheiner: And yeah, like, you know, if you have accessibility issues, we’re definitely average. So when I go to say wave.webaim.org comma web page address, you pop it in there, you hit enter, it gives you a scan of all these things. Obviously, that’s just pointing them out. Do most of these places that are going to do this all? Are they going to be the ones that fix it, or do I now need to go find somebody who fixes it? And do you know, and is that your job? Like who does the fixing and what’s the cost on something like that? And what’s the time frame?
Kris Rivenburgh: Great question. So who do you go to? Well, most providers will not actually remediate. They will provide, most provide audits, some there are really different classifications of accessibility sellers and it’s important to be aware of that. But some will provide an audit and they will provide support, but they will not touch your code. Others such as myself, we will do an audit and remediation. And you have to keep in mind there is the code aspect and then there’s the content aspect. So you have to be aware of both because both can come into play. Code is the most important because that’s where the expertise comes into play. Because you can also go to a developer and you say, hey, I need to make these fixes. But if the developer isn’t familiar with accessibility, then there’s a shortcoming there, right? It’s not like they can’t figure it out as they’re working through it. But ideally you’d rather have a developer who is well-versed in accessibility, who is remediating your website. So that’s how I would approach that. The different elements to think about in terms of cost, it really varies. So an audit probably starts at $2,500 and for most websites it’s going to range up to $7,500 or higher. When it comes to audit costs. Just think
of the scope. So how many pages are in scope, the complexity of your website, so how many dynamic elements you have, and then also think about the number of accessibility issues you have and also the technology. If the technology is outdated, it’s going to make just makes things a little bit more difficult, especially on the remediation side. Some people ask me about website rebuilds. I typically don’t recommend a full rebuild unless it’s just like you might as well start over because then you get the value out of conversions and a better modern design, et cetera. But if both, for most websites, I just recommend, let’s remediate these accessibility issues. And what’s also important is you have to be working within a platform that allows full code access because some platforms limit your access to the code. And if that’s the case, then we won’t be able to remediate it fully. We can remediate to the extent we can. But that’s as much as the customization will allow. The other part of this is if you have third-party embeds or third-party integrations, we have to take those into account because we likely cannot remediate those because that is, code that is housed somewhere else and readable. Edit on the website.
Kyle Rheiner: Okay. Yeah, it’s interesting. I know a lot of folks in our world are using Shopify or Squarespace or something like that. And I don’t know. It’s true. I heard maybe even just in the back office of Shopify there’s like a toggle switch. Make my website ADA compliant. I doubt it’s that easy. But if somebody like Shopify is building your page, shouldn’t it just automatically be compliant? Should they be on top of it? A big company like that?
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, that’s a source of contention too. And so what Shopify could do is they could do everything on their end to provide accessibility out of the box. That would be ideal. But what happens is even if that was the case, then website owners would still need to take accessibility into consideration when they’re uploading content, whether adding anything new to the website, changing the website, because of course you’re going to customize it. So it’s never as simple, never as simple as like, hey, I just need to turn on accessibility or the switch or install this code, use the software. It is never that simple, not even remotely close. So it’s just something where if you really want that on off, you have to go to a thorough provider who’s going to take care of this every step of the way. And they’re going to, this is something you’re going to have to contract for. Hey, I need this done, this done, this done. I don’t want to deal with it, just do it for me. That’s the only on-off switch. And you really have to put a lot of faith in that provider that they’re going to be thorough, pay attention to detail, and take care of every last, aspect of this.
Kyle Rheiner: We talked about some things that we can do. Doing the scans in the audience. What are some things that people who have websites or online sources, what are some things, or even uploading content, what are some things they should stop doing immediately so they don’t get themselves in trouble?
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, stop installing overlay widgets. That’s one thing where it’s really third-party.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah.
Kris Rivenburgh: So with overlay widgets, you have this third-party embed or plugin or you paste JavaScript, some combination thereof, or some form of that. And the idea is that you will instantly make your website accessible and ADA compliant. Or at least that’s the impression that is being given. Their language and marketing language has changed over time. But think of these small little accessibility logos that you see on typically in the bottom corner of your website and you can click on that and then it will open up a menu of settings. Well, the idea here is that, oh, I installed this widget and now my website is ADA compliant and it won’t get sued. And that is not the case at all. But a lot of website owners have been for years mistakenly under this pressure and that’s a large part because these overlay widgets have been marketed as such as this is like this is the instant solution that you need that will solve everything, which is completely not the case. But that is one thing if I was a website owner, I would not do because they can actually, plaintiffs lawyers, if they come across these widgets, they know right then that you haven’t taken account into account the accessibility of your website. You haven’t fundamentally made your code and your content accessible, which is what needs to happen. So that is one thing I would do. I also would not purchase a scan, and that is because you can get almost all of the value from a scan, from the free scan that you just ran on webbing. There are other scans, some flag, a few more issues than others. But you just have to keep in mind that these are extremely limited. Some people think of them as ADA compliance checkers. It is nothing of the sort. It’s just like here are you accessible issues that we can flag through automation. These are those issues. Here are, here’s what we return to automation. They can be false negatives. Occasionally there may be false positives where it stands, doesn’t run right. So it’s just like, these are very helpful tools, but you know, for the general website owner, you know, they’re not going to derive as much value or really as much benefit from them as a lot of people think. It’s more just like, hey, now we know the general state of accessibility on a website, but there are so many more issues that we need to filter.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, it’s almost like when the Internet came about and we were making HTML websites and angelfire.com or whatever, when I was like, you know, when I was like ten, you know, things are so basic and now websites are so complex. Is it almost like you’re safer? Like, the more basic, the safer you are?
Kris Rivenburgh: That’s exactly right. The more simple your website is, the less dynamic it is, the easier it’s going to be able to make accessible. If you have, you know, that’s one of the recommendations I have. Like, you know, especially people asking like, hey, what budget? Like, what do I do? Well, simplify is a great way to do this. You just have to be careful what you’re doing and understanding what you’re doing. But yes, simplification is a really good route. And for some small business owners, I recommend they take their domain and they forward it to a Facebook page and they operate out of their Facebook pages because as of now, we still haven’t seen, I haven’t seen, I haven’t come across any lawsuits that have sued a Facebook page for accessibility. That’s not to say that there aren’t accessibility considerations for Facebook page, but what we see is that these are private websites that are into.
Kyle Rheiner: So Facebook’s kind of, they’re compliant in a way, or they’re accessible.
Kris Rivenburgh: Think of it as Facebook as a layer of insulation, because you are using this giant third-party platform. And, there are still accessibility considerations. We still need to upload content to Facebook and make it accessible. So it’s not that you can’t have accessibility issues on your Facebook page, but, like, they do provide a strong framework of accessibility because Facebook has, you know, these larger entities, they’ve largely taken care of accessibility, but I won’t say all because there’s still many where I can contact them and they will give me a generic response like, yeah, we’re working on it, et cetera. It’s not, it’s not the end solution, but it is something that will reduce your risk. And I always, you know, I deal with risk. Okay, let’s try to let this risk go.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah. And that’s, you know, great. Risk management is self-insure. Transfer risk to an insurance company or avoid it, not doing it. Right. Those are the three ways to manage risk.
Kyle Rheiner: Is that why, like, meta tags are such a big thing? Like when you have an image or something, they want you to use meta tags? Or is that more just like searchability and keywords, that sort of thing.
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, image accessibility is very important. And when it comes to images, just think about, like, if someone cannot visually see the image, then how will they know what content that image is? And sometimes images are decorative and so they really don’t relate to content. So if that’s the case, then we want to have a null alt attribute. But, if the image is meaningful, yeah, we want to have an alt text value that accurately and precisely describes that image. So yes, image accessibility is very important.
Kyle Rheiner: So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of somebody who is visually impaired, hearing impaired, unable to type or use maps. Like, what is their browsing experience like? I don’t know, what tools are they using to help them surf the web? What is that like?
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, so, people who are low vision or visually impaired or blind, they’re going to be using a screen reader typically, and, you know, and that’s the primary system technology tool that we’re thinking about. And we commonly see it come up in these lawsuits for people who are hard of hearing or deaf, then they’re going to be, the primary concern here is closed caption. So also we learn anything that comes across audibly, making sure that is available in another way. So, like, think about if you’re on your website, there’s a time to indicate something happens. If someone cannot hear that time, then you need to provide another way of, like, knowing
that something was successful or whatever the case is. And then when it comes to, motor impairments, we want to make sure that our website is fully keyboard navigable. And so that’s actually something that comes up a lot, is that websites are not keyboard navigable. And this is something that we can definitely have a very to access here because.
Kyle Rheiner: You’re saying, like, instead of a mouse, it can be used by the keyboard.
Kris Rivenburgh: Okay, so this is a really good test. Okay, you can go with that.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, it’s a really good test to unplug your mouse or not use your mouse whatsoever. Try using your website using only a keyboard. And if you cannot, or if you get trapped at some point, which is quite common, then you have an accessibility issue, and a major accessibility issue at that. One source of problems is pop-ups. Pop-ups continually cause keyboard traps because the focus is left on the main website page and then the pop-up is up that is preventing someone from using the keyboard.
Kyle Rheiner: So I assume you use, like, tab a lot and some arrows, and then maybe that pop-up’s sitting up there. You can’t tab to that pop-up because your keyboard’s kind of behind it.
Kris Rivenburgh: Right. Well, unless the focus goes to the pop-up. Right. If it doesn’t, you’re stuck behind it and then you can’t happen in your computer.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, it’s interesting. So those who maybe don’t have motor skills, are they using, like, voice-activated things?
Kris Rivenburgh: They can be. I mean, there are so many assistive technologies that are used.
Kyle Rheiner: So I don’t know anything about that.
Kris Rivenburgh: So, that’s got to be a huge industry that we’re just, we don’t know. We don’t see it. Unless you’re looking for it.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah. Unless you are, you know, using these different tools, then you know, you’re not thinking about them. But yeah, this is, this is a, this is a big, part of accessibility. It’s just keyboard and activity and making sure that people are able to go to the different elements on your page. Super important.
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And I mean, speaking of this, the good side is that, like, you know, there really is a real benefit. This is not something I focus on because people really, this is lost. But like, it’s true. Like, there is a part of your audience like that is. That may have difficulty using your website. And if you can improve the accessibility, there is, there is an auto either.
Kris Rivenburgh: Sure. It’s a whole new target market. Then back in Brown, your site.
Kyle Rheiner: Super interesting. I’m sure this continues to develop and there’s going to be better tools for browsing for everybody. But.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah, I mean, ultimately. Right. I mean, those who build websites need to set their game up. Is that kind of the deal here?
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, I mean, it’s really coming out because of litigation, which is, which is the law needs to be clearer and the guidelines need to be. The law is coming. I think it’s coming shortly. So private. And I think that will actually put lawsuits on hold for a while because I think there will be a period where website owners are allowed to become in compliance. I wouldn’t rely upon that because I didn’t mention, I didn’t answer your timeline question earlier. This can get take a while. Depending on the website, depending on the service provider, depending on if you want to take on remediation in-house. You also want to train your team so that you’re not making your website accessible. And then your team is introducing accessibility issues. That never-ending cycle. So, yeah, you need to, you know, this is one thing that I would pay to just be proactive with. I wouldn’t be perfect with it. You know, obviously go to your provider, you want perfection. But if you’re, if you’re working on this yourself, you want to get started. That’s the best course of action. It’s just like, let’s go, let’s, let’s get started. Let’s start taking care of these successful issues. What happens to a lot of companies is they get it, they get involved in bureaucracy where it’s like, well, who’s going to do this? And let’s set up the project and let’s talk about setting up the project and the whole time. The accessible issues, we can start fixing them right now, but let’s go by.
Kyle Rheiner: So, you know, step one is go to wave.webaim.org or your website and run a scan, right? Get the audit and then start to find somebody who’s going to remediate that. Is that.
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah, I think, I think going to wave and just look. Scan your website in the field for the overall accessibility, seeing if there are any issues that can be flagged by automation. Learning about those issues. What I love about A, is it really, educates you as you’re going through the accessible issues. So it will tell you, like, this is what this means. This is why this is important, etcetera. And then, having that, and then you can even start fixing with those, those issues and then continuing on and learning about accessibility. And that’s why I have my YouTube channel. There are so many things that people don’t know about the marketplace, because it’s one thing to start working towards accessibility, but then you have to deal with the marketplace where you have so many, reported value adds that really aren’t practically advancing you to where website owners want to be. So, of course, you know, accessibility is essential for, many website owners first, before they are concerned with accessibility. It’s like, hey, let’s not send out $20,000 or whatever the case is to plaintiffs lawyers. Let’s take that out of the equation and then we can put our money towards accessibility rather than plaintiff lawyers. So that’s why we focus. Just let’s work through these issues as fast as possible.
Kyle Rheiner: I was over on the wave website and I put the wave website in the checker just to see zero errors. So, it’s pretty neat. Contrast errors, zero. So that’s the colors, right? Not kind of color line like those tests I can never see in like Mills elementary school. Really all the little dots, like, I don’t see anything.
Kris Rivenburgh: Are you talking about.
Kyle Rheiner: My daughters are laughing at me. There’s these apps. Now you can test your color blind. I was like, you don’t see that? I’m like, well.
Kyle Rheiner: That gets into some of the success criteria, because one of them is that we don’t solely rely upon color to convey meaning. So think about a toggle where you’ve got an on-off switch and it changes colors based on on-off. But if you can’t see that color, then how do you know what it’s on and when it’s off?
Kris Rivenburgh: It’s almost like, you know my iPhone, right? Like a dark mode in a way.
Kyle Rheiner: Right?
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah, like, it’s just, it’s just like if you’re conveying information to color, which you just. A lot of people don’t think about, but if you are conveying information to color, think of a pie graph where you have a legend. It’s color-coded. Well, if someone cannot, you know, perceive the differences in those colors, then how are you going to know what that information is?
Kyle Rheiner: Yeah, it’s tricky, huh? This is super insightful. You’ve got a lot of knowledge. I’m glad we can connect. I think, you know, as you mentioned, helping people. I think this is. I think our conversation can help people. I think that obviously the work you can do is going to help people. Where can people get in touch with you? Like, how do we call you? What if what, you know, obviously wave is an option. But how do we talk to you? Question or what we do?
Kris Rivenburgh: Yeah, absolutely. So my email is Kris@Accessible.org. You can always email me directly. I have a YouTube channel, it’s. And in that channel, I try to answer as many of the questions that people commonly have, answer those questions on the channel. If you search for Amazon, you can find me by searching Ada book. That’s my book. And yeah, Accessible.org is the best way to contact me. Or I have another website, ada compliance.net, that has my training with, my training, I try to adapt and clients course where I try to tell people, these are the issues, where you want to prioritize these issues because these are the most commonly claimed issues in complaints, are the court. So really providing the strategy, the background knowledge, and there’s a WCAG guide course. What I try to do is provide everything that website owners need. Like that. The key here, going back to the start, I’m trying to be aligned with what people need and not what I want to sell or what I may want to sell it. But what exactly does the website need? I try to provide services and products that are aligned with that. And then if you look a lot of my information, I provide a lot of information. There’s a checklist on Accessible.org. But to answer your question, the short answer is Accessible.org is a great place to start. And of course, you know, anybody. Definitely feel free to reach
out and contact me. And we can work on it.
Kyle Rheiner: Is.org, does that mean you’re a nonprofit or not?
Kris Rivenburgh: No, I’m definitely a for-profit. I’m working for profit.
Kyle Rheiner: Make sure you pay those month-to-month rent bills.
Kris Rivenburgh: This is what I do. I mean, I’m spending my time and making sure that, I help as many people as possible. I gotta make money.
Kyle Rheiner: There’s a lot of time that goes into stuff. Yeah. And real quick, Kris, one of your recommendations on website integration was to simplify. Do you have a checklist? Is there some sort of other list of things that we can do besides just run the reports?
Kris Rivenburgh: Yes. So with Accessible.org, if you go, there are checklists. As far as simplification, this is going to get into, evaluating your website and removing those dynamic elements. You don’t have to remove everything. Just thinking of, is this necessary? Is this a third-party integration? If so, we need to evaluate this because it may be introducing accessibility issues. When you have interactive elements, anything where a user can interact with something, where there’s functionality that introduces complexity and there may be accessibility issues that result from it. If you make your website more informational-based, that is where we start getting into the reduction of risk. But this is a whole, like, no, this is getting into whole different, like, I can go on and on, but the point here is that, if you simplify your website, if you start like, let’s say you’re using WordPress and you start with a WordPress theme that’s fairly simple. And it claims to be accessible ready. That’s a good start, but you have to be. This is just something where we constantly have to be aware. It’s like, okay, well, you said you’re accessible ready, but is this theme actually WCAG compliant? Where can I introduce issues? There’s so much to think about and this is why I offer consultations. Well, if you’d like to talk to me about our website, we can work through these things on an individual basis. But yes, to answer your question, simplification is really going to help. It’s just going to make accessibility easier for you.
Kyle Rheiner: It’s probably like I’ll go to like a cyber liability training. It’s like, okay, I’m never going to use a credit card again in my life. I’m never going to go outside. And now I’m like, I should just shut down my website.
Kris Rivenburgh: I did this. Run my website. I have one error, and it has to do something with. I’ll have to dig into it, but I have an empty link. That’s my error.
Kyle Rheiner: So that’s good. That’s a really good start, because most websites, if they haven’t worked on accessibility, you’re looking at ten plus easy. So that’s a really, really good start.
Kyle Rheiner: If anybody. If anybody gets to just remember that just because you have an accessibility issue, the technical issue, it doesn’t mean your website is not compliant. It just means it means that you may be targeted, but there is a difference between the full WCAG conformance and compliance.
Kris Rivenburgh: Right now, that’s not going to go to jail because I said, all right. Cool. Holy moly, man. This stuff is, scary. So the more you know. And, I appreciate you. This is great. And everybody call Kris and get on that calendar and get compliant.
Kyle Rheiner: Cool. Hey, you got, like, another minute?
Kris Rivenburgh: Well, I just want to say thank you so much for having me on Kyle.
Kyle Rheiner: You’re very welcome. Thanks for reaching out. You ready for a couple of rapid-fire questions?
Kris Rivenburgh: We’ll go.
Kyle Rheiner: We’ll have some fun after all the scary stuff. All right. Number of siblings?
Kris Rivenburgh: One.
Kyle Rheiner: Hometown?
Kris Rivenburgh: San Antonio.
Kyle Rheiner: Favorite hobbies?
Kris Rivenburgh: Working out.
Kyle Rheiner: First job?
Kris Rivenburgh: First real job was Target.
Kyle Rheiner: Worst job?
Kris Rivenburgh: Worst job was probably being a waiter.
Kyle Rheiner: Also very important. And do you put pineapple on your pizza?
Kris Rivenburgh: No, absolutely not.
Kyle Rheiner: You’re the first one to say no. It’s a running thing. I have a group text with a couple of buddies that’s just like, well, if somebody has pineapple pizza, then they’ll take a picture and throw it in there, and they’ll just bash it.
Kris Rivenburgh: Pizzas are meant to be sweet.
Kyle Rheiner: Sweet, savory. With some ham on there. I’m cool. I’m cool with Hawaii. Yeah. Wild man. Cool. Kris, man, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate you, would love to do it again. Something else pops up you want to talk about. Let’s do it. This is great. I think this is super helpful for everybody out there, so thank you.
Kris Rivenburgh: It’s great. Cheers.
Kyle Rheiner: Absolutely. Thank you so much.